The Mind Meld Illusion
The clever mirror that morphs two faces into one
The Father’s Nose Illusion is a mirror illusion, but not a regular illusion. Two faces can meld into one by arranging strips of mirrors. Or so they say…
This gives the illusion that your face is being combined with another face. Optical illusions distort our perception. What we see does not agree with the physical reality. It almost plays a joke on us. It makes our brain tickle when we see something that looks real, it’s completely different. It’s not real.
According to twowaymirrors.com, The Father’s Nose Illusion is created by “utilizing strips of mirrors combines with stripes that are not mirrored”. This is what gives the illusion of the blend of the two faces. A prototype is easy to make but what if you want to actually have this installed in a museum. The post goes on about how you can make your own. I’m going to build one. The Father’s nose illusion is features by several prominent museum’s. It can be built at home using common parts such as:
- Glue
- Measuring tape
- Clear Glass
- Mirrors cut into identical strips
The Step by Step Process:
- I decided to order all my mirrors from the same website, twowaymirrors.com. This made the project much easier as they already knew about this mirror illusion.
- I decided on using their Anti Reflective Glass. This is what the glass experts had recommended for this project. I went ahead and ordered the glass in the size of 10.5 inch x 22.25 inch. You can do any size, this is the size that I needed to fit on my tripod .
- For the Mirrors, they recommend that I use a First Surface Glass. This is “an optical grade mirror that maximizes reflections minimizes distortion”. Which was perfect for this! I ordered in the thickness of 1.9mm so the glass blended into the Anti Reflections glass very nicely.
- Now, here comes the harder part. Since the glass is 22.25 inches long, you will need 10 stripes. You will be leaving 3 inches of space untouched at the bottom for the Mount to hold the glass. Since the glass is so thin, you do not want to place the Nikon mount on the 1.9mm strips because they will break. I decided last minute to order a few extra stripes, because the glass is so thin you can break it with any hard pressure.
- I waited a few days for all my glass to come in, and once it came in I got started right away. I couldn’t wait any longer! I measured the edges of the Anti Reflective Glass. Then marked on the glass with a sharpie every inch on the back side of the glass. This will give you an even distribution of the illusion, and you will be able to remove the sharpie marks at the end.
- Once that was finished, I lined up the First Surface stripes along the Anti Reflective glass. I did this between the 1" sharpie lines I had already made.
- To glue the stripes, I used clear super glue from Amazon. I applied it onto the glass and lined it up with the sharpie marks. The clear super glue helped a lot with minimizing the appearance of the glue on the glass. Then I did this to all the stripes of the First Surface Mirror.
- The First Surface Mirror does have a blue laminate on the mirror side. You will need to be sure to peel that off once all the glue has dried.
Once the glue dried, it was time to put this illusion to the test. I asked my sister to stand on one side, while I stood on the other side. We already look alike so I thought that this would be genius!
We stood at eye level as each other with the mirror at an equal distance between us. Once you’re synched, you’ll see a “composite” face, made up of some of your features and some of the other person’s. To get the best composite face, you may need to adjust your position from the mirror. Your partner will remain still.
The Exploratorium Article did this exact Mirror Project. They they didn’t use another mirror though. Instead, they used PVC and no mirror in place of the Anti Reflective Glass I used. This worked as well, though I would imagine you couldn’t see your own reflection. Which wouldn’t work as well with the Mirror Illusion itself.
Thoughts?
What did I think about it? This twisted my mind into thinking that the reflective image was real. As if I already had all these qualities. This is much different then looking into the mirror every once in a while. This was so beyond that. It was intense. I recommend that you try this, and the end product will be worth it!
